Google Enables Smart App “Delta” Updates in Google Play

Only a few hours ago, a reader that follows Droid-Life had noticed that his application updates were happening at a quick pace than normal. That’s made readers all over the internet wonder if the new “delta” feature in Google Play has gone live. The feature was previewed at Google I\O earlier this year which they basically called “smart” updates. Essentially it will allow you users to download only the newest code that was added to the application as opposed to being required to download the entire application all over again. Isn’t that brilliant? I think so.

In example, games like Dead Trigger will cost you 100MB of data to download to play the game. Unfortunately, when an update pops up you’re going to have to re-download the entire 100mb instead of just 5MB of code that was added. Now, with these “smart app” or “delta” features live, you’ll only need to download the new code that was added to the app instead of the entire application. This will save everyone a nice amount of data on their data plans. As you will see in the video below, Instragram updates only 2MB of the 13MB file and then installs instead of downloading the entire amount.

From now on this feature will be live n Google Play. Anytime you update an app you should notice it.

This is probably an amazing feature to have if you have one of those dreaded 2GB plans. Obviously those of you who are with a carrier that has an unlimited data plan, this probably does not matter for you at all. I’m personally happy to see this as I won’t feel terrible after using up a pretty large chunk of my plan on downloading a pretty large game to my tablet. I already use a ton of data off of my plan so this is going to be really helpful to me.

I’ll actually probably look into downloading The Dark Knight Rises on my tablet now. The 2GB file will now be insanely easy to play around with without having to constantly update it. 2GB’s is a lot to download for a lot of us, so this new feature that has finally gone live is literally amazing. I personally can not wait to try out some of these bigger applications now that this feature has gone live.

What about you? Do you like the idea of the new update or “delta” feature or are you more keen on the old way? If you prefer the old way, let us know in the comments below, we would love to hear why!

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: we are not affiliated with the device manufacturers or phone carriers we mention in any way, all suggestions are based on our own experience and research, you may use our advice at your own discretion.